Stake Choir
a long story for your amusement (or not)

Today my choir sang at Stake Conference.  Stake conference is a gathering we have twice a year where several churches in the area meet together to hear from high-up leaders.  This time we had two members of the Seventy come and talk to us.  The equivalent of a Mormon Seventy would maybe be a Bishop in the Catholic church.   So I was asked to form a choir, with members from all the churches to sing for this meeting. Because of scheduling problems we were only able to hold three practices with this choir before hand, and there were about 35-40 singer total and we sang 3 songs.

Do I even have to tell you what something like this entails? Music selections, preparing everything, recruiting, enlisting the help of pianists and section leaders, coordinating the practices, practicing conducting for hours in front of a mirror, long rehearsals.  You get the point.

At the end of the meeting Elder Roney stood to speak.  At the beginning of his address he starts talking about the choir and the song we had sung. He tells the congregation that they don't get to see things from the close vantage point that he gets sitting on the stand. Then he turns to my Stake President and asks what the director's name is.  The Stake President was caught off guard (I think he was confused as to whether he was asking for the name of the music director or the choir director), so when the Stake President doesn't answer right away Elder Roney turns around and looks right at me sitting there in the choir seats and  he points and asks what my name is.  I yell it out to him and he turns back around to the congregation (hundreds of people) and tells them my name.  Then he says (speaking of my directing in our last choir number)"You should have seen her. She was crazy. It made me want to sing, and I don't sing."

I just smile and tried not to put my head in my hand. It was meant in the nicest way. It was meant to be a complement, but when it was time to direct the choir for the closing number, I had his words in my head.  It took me a whole verse before I was able to shake it and get into doing what I was up there to do, that was to make the choir the best sounding choir I could.

After the meeting Elder Roney approached me and he smiled at me in a kind way with just a hint of apology. He offered his hand to me and I took it.  "I'd like to think I'm passionate," I told him. "Not crazy."  "Passionate," he repeated back to me, "that is a much better word."   And then he thanked me and complemented the choir.

The choir did do very well. I was happy with it. It wasn't perfect, but for only three (long) rehearsals, they were excellent.  I received a lot of complements.  In the end I received more complements about how I made people feel, how they felt the spirit, or felt inspired, than I did about the music itself.  That's very satisfying. So maybe it's okay to be a little crazy.